Live Wire Theatre Company Preview: Sketch This! Is a Zany Evening of Six Short Comic Sketches

Live Wire Theatre Company will present Sketch This!— which Live Wire artistic director Scott Franco describes as "a zany hour of comedy shorts about death, marriage, miscommunication, and male bonding" — July 23 and 30 at Tir na nÓg Irish Pub in Raleigh, NC, and July 24 and 31 at Six String Café & Music Hall in MacGregor Village in Cary, NC.

Franco says, "Sketch This! is a collection of six 10-minute comedy sketches by various comedy writers. I had seen one of the sketches performed before, but the rest of the collection are the result of hours of reading at the library and on-line, and one semi-staged reading a few months ago."

He adds, "We are the only group in the area performing sketch comedy in bars/coffeehouses. Since this is a fairly new theater company, we wanted to do something different, something that people in the area can't get from anyone else. Plus, comedy sketches are a lot of fun to work on.

"After producing Romeo and Juliet [co-produced with the Raleigh Parks and Recreation Arts Program May 15-30 in Raleigh's Pullen Park]," Franco says, "we wanted to break from the heavy nature of that story and give our audience something off-the-wall and fun. There's enough drama in the world already."

Franco says the show's set will include a table and four chairs. He says its costumes will be "base costumes, plus garment add-ons to show character/show changes."

"Staging any kind of theatrical performance at bars and nightclubs has its [own special] set of challenges," claims Scott Franco, "because the space isn't designed for that kind of performance. But we [will] make the most of the situation. Where there's a will, there's a way. Come ready to laugh."